Hey Whipon

[adaml]

I wanted to play through Bandit Kings of Ancient China and see the ending once and for all. I loaded it up and put in the codes you have on thegshi but none of them had any affect. I was playing the 4th scenario with Welcome Rain as my Hero. It says if your Popularity is over 250 you will get the Imperial Edict to be able to attack Gao Qiu's prefecture, but I used the code to set Popularity high and it has no effect.

My question is, did you get the value using a particular hero in a particular scenario? I tried playing as the Tattooed Priest with these codes and they did not affect him either. I really want to see if this game has different endings depending on who you played as, but raising the Popularity is a bitch, so I was happy to see your code. Now if I can only figure out how to get it to work!

[ReyVGM]

I tried the codes and they didn't work either ( http://gshi.org/?s=v2&sys=5&gid=8423 ).

Maybe he did them for the Japanese version?

I haven't beaten a Koei game, but from what I've read, the endings seem to be the same for all the characters. All that changes is their portraits.

You can even change the .ROM extension to .txt and you'll be able to read all the text found in the game. There's is only one paragraph that reads like what you would get as an ending. So, beat the game with one character (preferably the middle one) and if the text that you get matches the one you saw in the rom text file, then it's the same for all the other characters.

[adaml]

I'll look into that text thing Rey. The only problem with beating this game is that you have to raise your popularity to 250, which isn't easy to do at all. Hopefully Whipon will check out his codes and let us know if they were for a certain character in a certain scenario or if it was for the Japanese version.

[Hybrid]

where is the popularity in this game how do i know how much you have?

[Whipon]

Sorry I can't remember If I used the Japanese version or the American one.
Maybe if you search the forums a bit you can find the topic where I posted the codes.
I found the codes using the FCEUX hex editor.
When I have some time, I'll take a look at it again. At the moment I hacked the codes them worked for me.
Maybe the game uses DMA???.

[adaml]

Hybrid, when you start up a game after picking your lord and scenario, you will see a list of commands. If you push the controller right it will show the rest of the command list that didn't fit on the screen. Here you can View your Hero's stats and I think Popularity is on the 2nd screen (it's a big heart icon, I believe).

These Koei games are a bitch. In fact, out of the 10 North American released NES games I have yet to beat, 6 of them are these war sims from Koei. I will probably never beat all 10 games anyway, since Miracle Piano is one of the 10, but I'd at least like to put Bandit Kings out of its misery and see the ending after all these years. The only way to be able to attack the final guy is to get that Imperial Edict from the governor once January comes around (if your popularity is above 250). Maybe a cheat to automatically have the Edict would be more viable, though I don't know how you would make that.

Whipon, ifyou have a chance to look into this at some point that would be great.

[adaml]

Whipon, I found the thread you mentioned:
http://thegshi.org/vb/threads/3029-B...t=bandit+kings

It says you need to Recruit someone or Rest to get the code to work. I did both but I still can't get the Popularity value to rise. I am using the character Welcome Rain in the 4th Scenario on Difficult Level 1 if any of this matters.

[Whipon]

Well my friend, as I tougth this game uses DMA. That means the addresses will change allways you start a new game. Thats the reason my cheats don't work now.
The only way to find popularity in your current game is to do a search as follows:
Go to View => Home => Hero
See how much popularity you have.
Go to your emulator cheat search engine and search for that value.
Go to fight => Beasts.
Kill a beast with the desired character.
Now you've gained +5 Popularity.
Go to your character profile to see how much popularity you have now.
Search for that value.
Repeat until you have the correct address. It seems the addresses are at 60XX so it must be easy to you to cut out the results.
All of your character stats addresses are around the popularity one.

NOTE: You'll have to convert the values to HEX depending of your emulator. For example FCEUX uses HEX only.

I hope you can beat the game with this info n_n.

This game is a real bitch to hack. I tried to make some game genie codes to overcome the DMA, but its impossible. Every instruction used to write or read your stats its also used for another thing in the game. So altering those instructions also makes the game crash. All I tried failed because of that. Maybe someone more skilled than me can make some GG codes for it. But I doubt its possible.

[adaml]

Wow, that sounds evil. These damn Koei games are sure a pain in the ass. No wonder I can only find codes for a couple of them. They are (along with Miracle Piano) the only obstacles standing between me seeing the ending to every single USA released NES game.

I will definitely try a search using the method you described.

Now that I think of it, years ago I tried searching for the Popularity value by using two different save states. One was for a game I had started where my Popularity had gone up just a bit. The other save state was from a new game where I was using the starting Popularity value. Your DMA explanation would explain why I could never find the correct address using these two save states in my searches. I kind of feel like *less* of an idiot now...kind of.

Anyway, thanks a ton for looking back into this. I'm guessing it would be impossible to find a game genie code for this.

[ReyVGM]

DMA = Doesn't Mean Anything?

[Whipon]

DMA = Doesn't Mean Anything?

It stands for Dynamic memory allocation.
Google is your friend ^^.

[adaml]

Thanks to your help Whipon I spent almost 6 hours tonight battling through the game and finally beat it! At one point FCEUX crashed and I lost all my codes. After deciding whether I was going to cry and give up or battle back, I chose to fight and finally beat that slimy Gao Qiu. Even when you get the Edict and attack him, he keeps slipping off during the fight. I must have chased his army through 6 or 7 prefectures before I baited him out by going into a prefecture alone. He was finally there and even tried to run off during this battle, but I challenged him to a duel and finally got him. I never want to see this evil game again.

[ReyVGM]

Yeah, FCEUX has a habit of crashing when looking or adding codes. I've lost codes quite a few times because of that.

[GForce]

Congratulations on beating that hell spawn of a game. Only 8 games to go right? Whats next?

[adaml]

Hey GForce. The number is actually at 9 now. I was at 11 games left to beat since 2007 but knocked off Pool of Radiance and Bandkit Kings.

I'm in the process of playing Ultima Warriors of Destiny but apparently one of the 11 codes I made for the game prohibits me from using the magic carpet, which you need to progress into the game, so I'm contemplating starting over now